


Victory

by marchingjaybird



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Angst, Community: fandom_stocking, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchingjaybird/pseuds/marchingjaybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silhouette remembers how they met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fandom Stocking on LiveJournal.

It ends in the dark, blood and pain and terror, but it began in the light.

_They ran down the street, shouting that the war was over, that the Japanese had finally surrendered and the war was over. She moved with them, just another figure in the crowd, and it felt as though they all moved in slow motion, all the cheering, heart-swelling, boundless joy that comes with a definitive end. It was done, the boys would come home, there would be no more telegrams from the War Office, no more regret and no more fear, and even though she didn't love anyone overseas, even though it was simply another day to her, she was swept up in the ticker-tape triumph of it all and Times Square welcomed her with open arms._

_She moved down the streets, leather-clad and sleek, and people ran up to her, shook her hand and embraced her and wept on her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms around them and laughed with them and was part of it all and she never forgot it._

Not even now, lying on the mattress as her life drains away by slow increments, stolen by creatures that do not even deserve to be called men. Bitter creatures, vicious and cold. A white hand reaches, spidering across the sheets to find blood-soaked white fabric, and if she was able to cry, she would have sobbed until her heart broke. She cannot even muster a tear now, and that seems the greatest injustice of all.

_All around her, men seized women and kissed them, bending them back. They didn't know each other, would probably never know each other, but in that one shining moment of perfect joy, it didn't matter. They were American and they had won._

_She walked through it feeling larger than herself for the first time since she was a child, and when she caught sight of the girl jumping up and down, hands clasped in front of her as she spun, she couldn't help herself. The girl – the nurse – must have seen the intent in her eyes, and there was a moment where they regarded each other as the journalists snapped photos and the confetti fell and the people cheered, and then she wrapped a black-clad arm around the nurse's slim white waist and pulled her close and the first of many kisses occurred there on the street in shining daylight, in full view of everyone._

_None of them cared, and it was beautiful._

Now she looks up, straining to see the dark words written on the wall. It is an indictment and as the last breath rasps into her lungs, she wonders if she shouldn't have been more careful, if she shouldn't have kept their love away from the flashbulbs and gossip columns.

But to live in the darkness when they were born in the light? No. There are things that she regrets, but not that. Never that. And, dying, she knows that it was all worth it.


End file.
